Welcome one and all to our weekly excursion to the silly zone. Lots going on this week, an embarrassment of riches, from which our diligent tour planners here at the Weekend Holyland Wrap have labored long and hard to pick the most adjudicating for your reading pleasure.
By Rechavia “Rick” Berman
We’ll get to the whole “Oh noes! Da Palestinians Gonna Declare Statehood” horror picture show in a bit, but first some domestic stuff: The Labor Party held its primaries this week, to decide who will have the task, the glory and the doom of leading it as it attempts to avoid the first single-digit elections result in franchise history. This endeavor has been likened by a certain long-time feline reader of this fine and educational feature as “a height contest among smurfs.”
The first round ended in a virtual tie, with relative newcomer and former “strident crusader” journalist Shelly Yechimovitch, who has completed a remarkable ideological journey i125n the five years since switching playing fields, at 32% with ideologically dovish but proven doofus Amit Peretz at 31%. Boojie Herzog, who all the polls wrote off as a distant third, can claim he was wronged, as he still got 25%.
Back to Shelly Goes to Jerusalem….In 1996, still a famously ball-busting radio journalist, she voted (in a split ticket election) for the non-Zionist Communist party Hadash (which she claims was solely due to appreciation of MK Tamar Gozhanski’s parliamentary work, which was indeed stellar, but whatever). Amusingly, she claims “not to remember” how she justified voting for such a non-Zionist party, when years later she famously said Dov Hanin, from the same party and the exact same type of parliamentarian, shouldn’t be Mayor of Tel Aviv cause he doesn’t sing the national anthem).
In 2005, as she made her first steps away from the broadcast booth as a political entity, she was still saying clearly that the “have-nots” in the boonies and poor neighborhoods, “have not” because the government is running a separate welfare state in the settlements. But three weeks ago she came out as a born again “centrist” in a multi-page interview to Haaretz where she spurned the notion that there was nothing wrong with the settlements and that they were not in any way connected to the J14 discontents, arguing (not without basis) that the majority of Labor members back in the 70’s were not opposed to the earliest settlements either. Plus, of course, over the past three years she has done absolutely nothing but make it easier for Netanyahu’s exceptionally racist coalition to keep sailing smoothly. That much is fact.
On the other hand, we have Peretz, who says some lovely things, and will never tire of reminding folks how he was saying “two states” way back in 1982…. But who then turned around in 2006 and took the Defense portfolio (to prove that you don’t have to be a general to do it bla bla), got drawn into a very badly run, very brutal war, and in general did so badly once he WAS in charge of the party (despite bringing a surprising 19 seats in the election itself) that he was actually replaced by the second, disastrous coming of the toxic Ehud Barak. These are the choices facing a party that used to run Israel like a private fief. Although it is spared Barak, who went as we remember into the bosom of Netanyahu and formed a party that will never run for election on its own.
Bibi (aka Bibinicchio, The Baron von Bibhausen and so on) has decided to sally forth at the head of the hosts of hasbara (Israeli public relations), go to the UN and wax logical and eloquent about why what was good to create “Israel” in November 1947 is so very bad, terrible, no good at all to create “Palestine” in September 2011. Used to be a time when Israel, faced with a decision it didn’t like, simply accepted it – making its Arab counterpart then refuse it. Now Israel is faced with a decision that simply affirms what it claims to have adopted as a strategic choice its own damn self, and is freaking out, expending all its energy and diplomatic capital
Oh yeah, speaking of the Bibster, he tried to copy Obama’s situation room photo during the Bin Laden raid, with a photo-op from the Egypt embassy debacle. I can’t prove it, of course, but I refuse to believe that the dude from the embassy who was talking to him on the phone is named “Yonatan” (like Bibi’s hallowed brother from the Entebbe mission) by coincidence . Funny part is, the Israeli stasi (Shin Bet, General Security Service) told him he can’t release pics of the war room due to security concerns, so that bit of media magic never worked as planned, although we got to hear him on the phone with said “Yonatan”…
Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador in Amman was called home for fear that the Egypt scene would repeat itself, but only a couple of hundred showed up for the “day of rage” – which I think can be put down more to the efficacy of the tight reins held by King Abdullah than to lack of popular pro-Palestinian sentiment. Anyway, ambassador’s back in Amman and at least one of Israel’s regional diplomatic relationships is holding.
Still in diplomacy: Fresh off his resounding success in threatening to arm Turkey’s domestic terror group the PKK (which is demanding an apology. I shit y’all not), Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yvette Lieberman, had the ambassadors of European countries summoned to inform them, in no uncertain terms, that Israel expects them to vote against Palestinian statehood. I’m sure now the question is settled and they will behave. They’re goyim, after all. Sometimes you gotta spell things out for them.
As a result (in part) of Lieberman’s general diplomatic conduct, the Mediterranean just got less comfy for the Israeli Navy. Erdogan, who seems to be most in his element feuding with the Jews, had his navy go swing its own dick around the tub in distinct “we ain’t doin’ no joint drill with yo punk asses now” demeanor. The joys of pariah-hood.
OK, the hottest thing on the Hebrew net this week (speaking politically, not carnally…) was a blog post by Chaim Har-Zahav (Hebrew) about his army reserve service in “The Land of Binyamin” – which is to say the Binyamin district of the Occupied Territories. Despite this being the same district in which fairly heavy anti-separation wall demos take place every week, Har-Zahav describes a reality in which the greatest danger to IDF soldiers comes from the settlers. He tells of a thirty-day stint that began with fellow soldiers at the base giving him cryptic warnings, continuing with settlers calling them to the scene, demanding they expel an “intimidating intrusion” of two Palestinian women “so old they may have fought us in 1948” who were on their way to a fruit grove that they legally own. From there it continued, featuring multiple incidents of himself and other soldiers being pelted with large rocks, building blocks and a few times a Molotov cocktail by settlers or from settlement positions. The vast majority of these incidents go unreported, which although apparently true is ironically hard to sell so shortly after the widely reported and clucked-over incident last week, where settlers broke into a military base, disabled vehicles and scrawled “tag price” graffiti. This, against the army that keeps the natives down for them.
A couple not so bad things happened this week too. The IDF has announced it will NOT be giving religious soldiers an exemption from ceremonies whenever they happen to include the awful sacrilege of a female singing. We’ll see how long that stands, but for now gotta give Chief of Staff Benny Ganz a plus on this one.
Meanwhile in a civilian court, the high court in fact, a “community hamlet” in the Galilee by the name of Rakefet was forced to allocate a lot for an Arab couple, Fatna and Ahmad Zebidat, to build a home on. Arabs. In a nice Jewish mountain exurb. I know.
Some residents still hope to “make them see they just don’t belong here”, while others were quoted welcoming them. That the high court was needed to decide the matter suggests that a majority in Rakefet tend towards group A.
As I told y’all last week, The August and Infallible Government of Israel, proxy of the Heavenly Host Around the Seat of Glory, took a report about Bedouin claims in the Negev that basically recommended to recognize all the “unrecognized” villages and settle the dispute somewhat generously towards the Bedouins, put it twice through a “subcommittee” and “implementation commission” wringer (the latter headed by a notoriously hard-line right winger), and came up with a decision that requires the relocation of some 40% of all Bedouins in the South of Israel – about 30 thousand men, women and children.
A few highly pertinent numbers, courtesy of Israeli superstar blogger Idan Landau (Hebrew): The Bedouins are 30% of the total population of the Negev outside of Beer Sheba (if you include Beer Sheba, where some Bedouins also live, you still get about 20%). They currently occupy 2% of the land of the Negev, and the hypothetical granting of each and every one of their current claims and demands without reserve or change would result in them occupying a grand total of 5.4% of the region. 30% living on 5%. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, and still leaves a lot for natural space (and military needs, sigh).
Quick historic recap: In 1948, the embryonic Israel said to the Bedouins of the Negev “Stand down, don’t join them other Arabs we’s fightin’, and when we win we’ll respect all your claims as currently recognized (by the British, who were leaving)”. We won and immediately declared the vast majority of the Negev off limits, forbade many family members from returning from Sinai where they fled the battles, and herded the nomads and semi-nomads into a small triangle around Beer Sheba. The current claims being made are vastly smaller than what Israel promised would be theirs. But no. Not even that. Not even close. And this is how Israel treats a segment of the Arab population that serves in its armed forces. So when someone uses the “they should perform their civic duty first before they demand equality” – throw the above back in their teeth. That dog won’t hunt.
I did promise I’d talk about the impending Palestinian statehood bid, didn’t I? I mentioned last week how this would be a “state” that doesn’t even control its own population registry. Well, this week we were reminded that this state needs permission to go potty, or in this case buy tear gas to deal with expected lively protests. That’s what makes Lieberman’s huffing and puffing so hilarious – the absolutely most powerful pressure move the PA could pull would be to simply quit. To tell Israel “You deal with the garbage. Please. Go ahead.” But then of course there would be no cushy jobs, no pomp and circumstance, and no tolerance for thuggery and corruption.
BTW, what’s up with the stupid chair stunt? The PA is apparently dragging a chair around with the UN emblem and PALESTINE emblazoned on the back. Thing is, they can’t seem to decide on what the chair should look like (is it this or this?). In either case, if the spoils of this grand effort look like this, I’d suggest reconsidering, cause daaaaayumn.
Meanwhile Israel has decided to truncate the weekly theater of the absurd in the village of Nebi Salah, where protesters are fighting the double injustice of land theft for the separation wall and the theft of a spring by neighboring settlers (under army collusion – the same army they then go and “price tag”…). Israel declares the entire village a “closed military zone” early Friday morning, and begins to cloud the village with tear gas well before the protest march even comes close to getting underway. This is the work of the commander of regional division Binyamin, one Saar Tzur, who is apparently much more of a “wham bam thank you ma’am” kinda guy than a romance and foreplay one. We will now hold a moment of silence in sympathy with his significant other.
Oh, J14? Being nicely neutered, thanks. There is some exciting groundwork going on at the grassroots level, some exciting new alliances; and maybe in 20 years or even less people WILL say it all started in the summer of 2011, it being a significant system-wide change for the better. But as for results right now, the Trachtenberg Committee recommended a 4 billion shekel reduction in the defense budget to go to social causes – which is a mere token and proves that “green and callow” Daphni Leef was right from the start to reject this committee. Tip your hat to the hat lady on that one.
Meanwhile Defense and Treasury are having at it. Defense is castigating Treasury’s attempt to use the protests as an opportunity to grab some of the green beast’s massive layers of lard. Treasury came up with a nice riposte: Accusing the army of evading taxes. It would be funny if the way the black hole known as the defense budget is finally breached will be through tax charges. Worked for Capone!
And on that untouchable note, we shall call it a week. This tour is not responsible for any illusions, sympathies or misconceptions that may have been misplaced on our tours. Please collect your senses and check your comments where appropriate. Thank you for flying the crazy skies.
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Rick’s book, Jewcy Story, a humorous popular history of the Jewish People in the Second Temple Era, can be purchased for Amazon Kindle, Smartphone or PC here.